Skeptic Summary #53

An anniversary blowout!

Week ending August 12, 2005 (Vol 2, #32)

Welcome to the Skeptic Summary, a quick week-in-review guide to the Skeptic Friends Network and the rest of the skeptical world.

And then some! This week, we’re not only going to bring you our regular selection of highlights from the past week, but also from the last year. Yes, this issue marks the first anniversary of Skeptic Summary #1, and I can tell you, the staff is pretty excited about how this small publication of ours is going (and the whole SFN Web site, of course, including our informal partnership with Skepticality). So in celebration, we thought we’d take a short jaunt through time, and offer our readers some of notable topics, events and articles since the birth of the Summary, along with our regular fare…

March, 2005:Testing a Dowser - furshur successfully took an example from real life to use as a point-by-point reference when examining the “new scepticism” from Mr. Drasin’s list, as latinjral suggested.

NASA Warped Our View of Space - “…even if nobody was hurt, and even if there was no cost to the taxpayers, the Apollo moon hoax hurt the human race because it has given people a warped view of the universe. This in turn is causing other problems.”

Kil’s Evilest Pick:

Free the West Memphis Three - Although there was no physical evidence, murder weapon, motive, or connection to the victims, the prosecution pathetically resorted to presenting black hair and clothing, heavy metal t-shirts, and Stephen King novels as proof that the boys were sacrificed in a satanic cult ritual. Unfathomably, Echols was sentenced to death, Baldwin received life without parole, and Misskelley got life plus 40.

Chat Highlights:

Editor’s Note: both Dr. Mabuse and Cuneiformist became SFN staff members (and hosts of their respective chats) back around the end of November, 2004. Just a year ago, we didn’t even have a regular Sunday chat, but on June 12th, 2005, we had our first chat with a special, featured guest (it was Derek and Swoopy from Skepticality). A big thanks go out to everyone who has helped make Sunday a popular time to get together and gab, in addition to the Wednesday chats which have been going for quite some time. Keep up the good work, guys! Your contributions to the SFN (which extend to far more than chatting) are very much appreciated.

Wednesday: Your moderator was late (as usual), and jumped into a conversation about backwards clocks. Whatever those are. Also: AOL “basically sucks”; cancer treatment; whitewater rafting; survival; cunning linguists; surfing and mass exodus! Come by next week to figure out what it all means!

“The first book by an archaeologist on ancient Israelite religion, this fascinating study critically reviews virtually all of the archaeological literature of the past generation, and it brings fresh evidence to the table as well. While Dever digs deep into the past — revealing insights are found, for example, in the form of local and family shrines where sacrifices and other rituals were performed — his discussion is extensively illustrated and communicated in non-technical language accessible to everyone.

Dever calls his book “a feminist manifesto — by a man,” and his work gives a new prominence to women as the custodians of Israel’s folk religion. Though the monotheistic faith and practice recounted in the Bible likely held sway among educated, elite men in Jerusalem, the heart and soul of Israelite religion was polytheistic, concerned with meeting practical needs, and centered in the homes of common, illiterate people.”

“Carl Sagan muses on the current state of scientific thought, which offers him marvelous opportunities to entertain us with his own childhood experiences, the newspaper morgues, UFO stories, and the assorted flotsam and jetsam of pseudoscience. Along the way he debunks alien abduction, faith-healing, and channeling; refutes the arguments that science destroys spirituality, and provides a ‘baloney detection kit’ for thinking through political, social, religious, and other issues.”

The mission of the Skeptic Friends Network is to promote skepticism, critical thinking, science and logic as the best methods for evaluating all claims of fact, and we invite active participation by our members to create a skeptical community with a wide variety of viewpoints and expertise.